How to Give Claude Code a Real Browser: Headful Chromium in Docker with Playwright MCP
A couple of weeks ago I asked Claude, via the Chrome extension on my Windows laptop, to find me the best-value used M1 MacBook Air on eBay. It was properly good at it. It searched with sensible filters, opened listings, read the descriptions for battery cycle counts and “cracked screen” small print, and left the three best tabs open for me to look through. Then I tried to picture doing the same from my phone on a day I’ve left the laptop at home, talking to the agents on my always-on dev VM. There’s no browser there. Claude Code’s web fetch tool gets blocked or served a stripped-down page by most retailers, eBay included. So I gave the VM its own browser: a real, headful Chromium in a Docker container. Claude drives it through Playwright MCP, I can watch and take over from my phone over VNC, and it’ll crop screenshots straight into this blog. Every image in this post came out of it, the cover included. ...